


more courage to live

by salazarastark (niewanyin)



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Chains, Established Relationship, Hurt Ray Palmer, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Oral Sex, Protectiveness, Rape Aftermath, Rescue, Spitroasting, Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:40:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24196054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niewanyin/pseuds/salazarastark
Summary: Ray's attacked by some men that want to take revenge on his boyfriend.
Relationships: John Constantine/Ray Palmer, Ray Palmer/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	more courage to live

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arazsya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy the fic!
> 
> Title is from this Albert Camus quote: “But in the end, one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”

Ray screams as the whip is brought down upon his back again, the men above him cackling with laughter over his pain. He doesn't want to give into them, he doesn't want them to see him like this, but he can't find it within himself to hide the truth. Besides, what does it matter? These men have him tied up in some cellar where they're whipping him to his heart's content, since they got bored with beating him up.

His ribs are aching and he knows that at least a few of them are broken. His mouth is full of blood because how hard they punched his face, his eye already swelling to what he thinks is going to be a truly vicious black-eye. His entire body aches, especially his arms as they're the only thing supporting him at the moment, hanging limply from the chains as his legs refuse to steady him.

His head is bowed, chin touching his sternum as his hair falls in front of his face. His vision is jumping with black spots and everything seems hazy, and there's a ringing in his ear.

He has a concussion, great.

There's four men around him. They got the jump on him as he was just walking around London, taking in the sights of the modern day city, comparing it mentally to the other times (literally) that he visited London before. He remembered that this one clothing store was a pub where John told him that his eyes were pretty for the first time, when they weren't even together, but Ray's heart had warmed up and his face had flushed at the fact that someone thought that he was pretty. Other sites, other memories, flickered through his mind, to the point that he didn't even notice the men stalking him.

Not until it was too late.

His memory is hazy, he doesn't know if he got the concussion then and that's what's screwing everything up or if it's something he got recently and it's blocking his memories of everything that happened, but he does know that either way, it isn't good.

He tries to fight the tears, but they still coarse down his cheeks as he struggles to tell himself that he's going to be found. His team succeeds in pulling miracles out of hats, they're going to find him and save him before this gets too bad because that's always how it goes.

He tries his best not to think about the fact that eventually, all luck runs out and this could be the moment.

One of the men sighs above him. It's the man holding the whip, and Ray really wants to ask him what the fuck is thinking about sighing. It almost sounds like he's bored, that beating and whipping Ray isn't the fun afternoon activity that he had planned.

He doesn't dare say it however. He learned long ago how to tamp down on his rage and anger, shove it away and pretend it isn't there. And besides, he doesn't want to upset the man above him anyway. Any of them really. He knows that he's nothing more to these men as someone to torture, and if they get done with too soon, then he's not going to be able to count on his team to save him.

A sob punches its way out of his throat as he thinks about the fact that it doesn't matter if his team finds him dead and rewinds time to the point that he doesn't remember dying, it's not going to change the fact that he'll still experience dying right here and now, that someone on his team is going to remember finding his broken and beaten body and realize that it was too late.

He just prays that whoever it is, it won't be John.

He doesn't deserve that.

"What?" another man snaps. "What's wrong?"

"It's just-" the first man sighs again, and Ray feels his eyes racking over his body. "It's just that it's hard to get excited when this is Johnny's boy, you know?"

What? Johnny's boy?

Oh fuck. Ray tenses in fear as he realizes that his kidnapping wasn't a terrible coincidence or something that he himself did. These men were after John and either kidnapped Ray to get to him or because they couldn't get to John. Either way, it's sure as shit not a good thing and John doesn't know what's actually going to happen now. He doesn't even know what their specific beef is with John, a man that manages to make it with over half the people he meets.

Them resorting to kidnapping and torture suggests to Ray that it isn't like John cut them off in rush hour traffic, but it's also very hard to think about kidnapping and torturing a person that has no idea what you're mad about is suppose to accomplish, so maybe it was John's horrible driving that brought this on.

Either way, it doesn't matter. They're going to kill him soon to fuck with John or they're going to leave him alive so that John can see what they've done to him. And now that one's expressed boredom with whipping, only God knows what's going to happen next.

"What are you thinking?" a third man asks, and he feels the too-gentle touch of the first men on his bleeding back. He hears a soft hum, and then the man's hands dip lower, on the curve of his ass. Laughter begins to echo through the dungeon as they catch onto the first man's thinking, laughter that echoes through Ray's head as he realizes with a sinking stomach what he's implying.

They make quick work of the chains that hold his hands above his head, making him drop to the ground with indignity. He manages to land on his knees, only to bite back a scream as he realizes that probably wasn't the smartest way to catch himself. He can't breathe as he feels the men fumbling his pants off, still laughing as they imagine how they're going to fuck him.

No, not fuck him. Fucking him is what John does when they come back from a mission, bruised and adrenaline rushing through them, laughter and tears staining their voices, Ray's legs wrapped around John's waist as they take pleasure in the other, in being  _ alive _ . This is not Ray about to be fucked, because it's not about John making a desire course through him and it's not John touching him with a desperate passion and then even more desperation not to bring any pain that Ray doesn't want.

No, what these men are going to do is rape.

He's about to be rape, and he can't figure out a way to get out of this situation. The only thing that he can think to do is survive it long enough to prolong his life, which means that he will need to play their game, as much as it hurts. He can't imagine John breaking up with him because of this, Ray knows that he has issues and that he's more insecure that he wants to be, but he doesn't doubt John's love.

But this isn't about John and his love and if he'll leave him or not, this is about, Ray thinks as he's pushed to his hands and his pants and underwear are fully taken off and a man is forcing two fingers into him, how he really, really doesn't want to be raped and he would do a lot of things to make sure that isn't a reality. Except that would most likely end up in Ray's death, so yeah, he's going to be fucking raped because this will buy him time that he needs.

Ray doesn't often wish death on people, but he burns with the desire to see these motherfuckers obliterated.

Another finger is forced inside his body, and with a whimper, he takes a deep breath. This is not okay. He does not want this. He repeats that to himself over and over again as they stretch him dry, trying to prepare them to take him, but he doesn't think that this is going to be enough. Nothing will ever be enough to prepare him for what's about to happen.

It isn't. He's yelling when the first cock shoves into him, biting down hard on his lip because he doesn't want them to hear him scream, but then he realizes that nothing is really going to stop his pain, so he might as well make them aware of how much he hates this, and how much he hates them. 

His nails dig into his palm, making them bleed, and he thinks about his mouth spewing curses and hate as he thinks about telling them all the ways that he thinks them pitiful and pathetic people, that they have to force someone to fuck them.

That actually feels really fucking to think, but he doesn't dare say it because he really doesn't want to die. He rolls his shoulders as he stares ahead, but one man decides that while they wait for his ass, they might as well make use of his mouth, forcing his dick into his mouth despite the fact that Ray could easily bite it off.

He's not going to, but God, he wants to.

With a groan, he allows the man to force him to suck his dick, and to entertain himself, he imagines how gruesomely John could kill this man. He thinks about how much they could end up hurting before they're released into death, and the pain that would surely await them in hell for being a fucking rapist.

He focuses on the pain throughout his entire body, because it's not a good idea to focus on anything else. Focusing on the pain means that he doesn't have to focus on his grief. Focusing on the physical sensations of being used by four men means that he doesn't have to focus on how it feels inside of being used by them.

He knows that his team thinks of him as the most emotionally available of the team, that he's the one that always wants them to talk about their issues and get to the bottom of things. And they aren't wrong. But the only reason why he's the most emotionally available of the team is because he's just a very secure bank and they're all Fort Knox. He only pushes people so that he can make sure that their glaring weaknesses will work well with another's strength, and that he doesn't have to be constantly worried about things failing. He doesn't like talking about feelings, and he doesn't like admitting that he doesn't know how to do something. The pain of it catches in his throat, and burns at his eyes.

There's something in him that screams at the thought that he's going to have to deal with this for the rest of his life. That what's happening to him today is going to be something that happened to him a year from now, five, ten, a hundred.

He is always going to be a victim now.

No, he won't let himself think about it too much. He will push this aside and deal with the emotions long enough to make sure that he's not going to be a complete and total failure on the field, and then he's going to be fine. He knows that he can make himself be fine.

Maybe if he makes it through the worst right now, he can actually rescue himself so that way nobody has to know, because they're all going to want to talk about this, but in such increasingly awkward ways that it'll make Ray want to die almost as much as he wants to die now.

Because he wants to die.

For all that he's going through this to survive, right now he really fucking wants to die.

The first man is done in his ass and he's been replaced by a second. He cums in him, and Ray flinches as he feels himself being filled and then emptied and then filled again. The man in his mouth releases, and he's replaced by the fourth. The first men go over to the side, laughing as they already start reminiscing on how they spitroasted Ray.

He hangs his head lower so they can see his burning cheeks and the tears starting to escape him, and he tries to go to a quiet place in his mind, a place where everything isn't so bad, a place where-

The wall to the cell explodes open, and Ray hears the most beautiful voice in the world. "Well, what the fuck do we have here?"

John. John's here, he came for him. The knot in Ray's throat ends up being just the littlest bit tighter.

He closes his eyes, and lets himself sink more into a darkness as John begins to fight, the rest of the Legends behind him.

He wants to get up and fight, but his body hurts and his emotions are out of control and he decides to just collapse where he is. He trusts John and the team to take care of everything.

Right now, he just wants to sleep.

*

He wakes up in a warm bed with an aching body. He blinks up at the white ceiling, wondering what he's going to say to everyone since they’ve seen him in the aftermath. It's not that Ray thinks that he was weak for being raped, but. . . . He does.

He would never think that about anyone else, but he can't believe that there's no way in hell that his team isn't realizing how much a failure he is in a fight. He couldn't even stand up to get a few licks in.

And then he realizes that there's a hand lightly on his, and he turns over to see his John next to the bed, head on the bed, fast asleep. The amount of physical affection that the man doesn't usually allow makes Ray's breath catch in his throat as his eyes tear up. He wonders if he should wake John up now, or let the man continue sleeping. He used a lot of magic earlier, it must have tired him out and Ray doesn't want to disturb him.

On the other hand, he really doesn't want to be alone with his thoughts right now, because his thoughts are still in that cell.

He carefully flips his hand over and lightly traces John's knuckles, worrying his mouth as he feels the raised scars from a multitude of fights from over the years, building up and hurting the man he loves. There's fresh scars, on both his hands and his face, and Ray wants to lean over and kiss them better, a phrase that would have John groaning and rolling his eyes, but he would let Ray do it. He would let Ray take care of him.

He hates it, but Ray feels a crawling in his gut at the thought of touching John again after everything. One day, he will again, but right now, the simple hand on his, that wasn't even a clasp until Ray turned into one, is just what he needs.

"I love you," John whispers, and Ray nods, because he didn't note the man waking up, but he knew it was happening sooner or later. His boyfriend is a smart man who has a well-earned survival instinct, he's going to notice Ray waking up. "I was so scared," he continues, turning his head to look up at Ray, true and honest fear and anguish in his eyes. Despite all they've been through, John will still try to hide his feelings through a sheen of arrogance and bluster, a facade that Ray constantly fights against. The fact that he's so willing to let Ray see how he's feeling now tells him how scared John was. Without thinking about it, Ray moves their hands to right underneath John's face, tilting it slightly and holding it in place. It would take nothing for John to shake it off, but he stays exactly where Ray wants him.

He licks his lips and whispers, "I love you too," and the sheer relief in John's eyes is devastating. He thought he was going to lose Ray. Either to Ray's anger over what those men did in John's name or because he was died, he was convinced that he was going to lose Ray. "It's not your fault," he says. "Wasn't mine either."

He's really tired right now, but he needs to keep talking. Has to make sure that John hears him and believes him.

"Those men-" John chokes out, but Ray shakes his head. He doesn't care about those men. Not right now. Soon, he will. Soon, he'll sit John down and insist on hearing the whole story. But right now, those men have taken enough from him and he doesn't want to give them more. He wants to close his eyes, sink into sleep, and wake up with John still by his side.

So he does, only thinking to whisper, "Stay," as he drifts off, squeezing his hand.

And he knows that it isn't his imagination that John squeezes it back.

He doesn’t know what the future is going to bring. Hatred of himself and the men swirls in his gut, and there’s anger too. Even some directed at John. And there’s still the need to survive and the want to die warring in his mind. He knows that when he wakes up again, he’s going to need to face it again.

But right now, he wants peace and he has it.

He’s not going to turn it away tonight, when he can start healing tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear them below.


End file.
